2023-05-03 07:58:05
Fans of satirical evening shows, late-night showshad to settle for reruns: the strike of Hollywood screenwriters began on Tuesday May 2 after the failure of negotiations between their union, the Writers Guild of America (WGA), and the Alliance of Film and Television Producers ( AMPTP) on the wages and working conditions of authors in the age of streaming.
The WGA represents some eleven thousand screenwriters. All day, strikers posted themselves outside the headquarters of Los Angeles studios and streaming platforms to dissuade employees from entering, plunging Hollywood into a slow pace, unprecedented since the closure of the studios due to the Covid-19.
Outside Netflix headquarters, union president Meredith Stiehm cheered on the troops marching with signs “No pages without a living wage” or “Show the Money”. The ‘guild’ released a chart showing the salaries of entertainment industry CEOs in 2022. Disney’s Bob Iger took home $45.9 million, Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, from Netflix, respectively 51.1 million and 50.3 million (up 32% in one year). The remuneration of television screenwriters, adjusted for inflation, has however fallen by 23% in ten years, according to the union.
“Our minimum wage (negotiated by the union) has become our ceiling”denounced Brittani Nichols, screenwriter of the very popular comedy Abbott Elementary on ABC and one of the “guild” executives, noting that the industry posted $19 billion in profits in 2022 and continues to spend billions on content creation. “The studios behave as if the only thing they care about is Wall Street, she explained to Amy Goodman, from the show “Democracy Now!” They’re chasing a rabbit they’ll never catch and, in the process, they run over the people who make this industry. »
Feeling of worthlessness
Writers have stopped work just six times since the WGA was founded in April 1933. The first strike, in 1960, lasted nearly five months. The longest, in 1988, lasted exactly five months. The current movement is reminiscent of that of 2007-2008, which lasted for a hundred days, costing the entertainment industry more than 2 billion.
At the time, as today, it reflected the concern of screenwriters in the face of the development of new technology. In a press release announcing the failure of the negotiations, the WGA mentioned, Tuesday, May 2, the “existential crisis” suffered by the creators, practically reduced to the status of contractors of the gig economythe economy of piecework – and their feeling of devaluation.
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